


Steadfast Mercies

by orphan_account



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-09
Updated: 2006-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-19 08:22:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for <a href="http://52-flavours.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://52-flavours.livejournal.com/"></a><b>52_flavours</b>: themes 47, 21, 27, 49, 6 and 8, respectively.   er, apologies for the quality?</p>
    </blockquote>





	Steadfast Mercies

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://52-flavours.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://52-flavours.livejournal.com/)**52_flavours** : themes 47, 21, 27, 49, 6 and 8, respectively. er, apologies for the quality?

_the only adventure_

So it is, then; they wander from hotel room to campfire and through all the places in-between, beholding what they choose, and partaking of what they wish to partake. Their fancies are their guidebook, and the world their Eden: a jungle of legitimate pleasures, filled with forbidden fruits they do not know of, or do not care to try.

#

_new every morning_  


Killua wakes at the same time every morning, fifteen minutes past six o'clock to a taut, prowling predawn, all instincts of the predator awake, alert to the sound-shapes of whatever environment he is in – be it the redwood forest or the hay-scented barn where they hid last night from the summer rains – and mindful to the soft, deep patterns of Gon's breathing.

Twenty past six, if they are in a hotel, or some other civilised building, he pads through darkness to the bathroom and files his nails. It is a time-honored family tradition; Killua can do this with river rocks if he is forced to. A Swiss army knife and nail-sharpening stone (patented by the fifteenth Zoaldyeck heir some uncounted generations back) work better. When his fingertips are red with pain and the nail-blades too keen to be visible, he flushes the toilet, watching flecks of keratin and callused skin disappear down the slosh of water.

He turns on both taps and and plugs the sink with the flat of one hand. He retracts his claws; watches arteries, blue-blooded veins fade back into position as the steaming-icy water pools around his wrist.

He wonders what it is like to be a new man.

 

#

_tomorrow is something we remember_  


They are not men, but boys, and singular boys at that. Gon is a boy who cannot forgive. He cannot forgive because he does not yet know how to be wronged: sin, like _grudge_ and _guilt_ and _jealousy_ , is no more than a hazy abstraction to him, no more real than the fractures of his arm, long-healed and never remembered.

Gon has never hated Jin for abandoning him, because he has never felt abandoned, and consequently it does not occur to him that Mito could feel abandoned. He doesn't think about the past, because the past is just a long string of todays only gone now, and maybe with the sea-scented air and Mito-san's home cooking instead of an endless change of scenery from wet canopies to metropolitan debris to yellow desert, with a diet of wild berries and fast food, supplemented by Killua's eternal chocolate supply.

As for the future, the thread of todays will one day intersect with Jin's thread, and whether they then intertwine or diverge into infinity, Gon does not need to know.

Killua runs from his past, and he cannot see a future beyond Gon.

#

_and yes, the way you look at me_  


Killua thinks that Gon is the light.

Light burns. Look into Gon's eyes and you will see no remembrance of things past; no frustration with things as they are; no impatience for things to come. Killua has seen men and killed women, and been taught every weakness a human mind can carry. Gon is no paragon, Gon is no peerless warrior - there are a hundred flaws in his fighting style, a thousand weaknesses in his psychology.

Killua would take sixty seconds to kill him, Killua would never kill him.

#

_grace coming out of the void_  


Killua shows grace to others because he himself has been shown grace, because he lives and walks in a dream of slow passing days, in a tapestry of adventure more real than reality itself, blazing with nen-aura and damp twigs and caramel mudcake – rich in spell cards and battle towers clogged with the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke, thick with danger and travel and schoolboy brawling.

They journey onwards, then; growing as they go, and forgiving as they live. The one thing Killua will never forgive anyone for is hurting Gon.

#

_the blind leading the blind_  


He wants to be a Hunter because of what Gon has done for him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Re the nails: having not watched the anime, or observed the manga illustrations extensively, I can't actually figure out whether Killua's death-claws are organic or some sort of metal implant? I like the organic theory better, so I ran with it for this fic.   



End file.
